1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus of servicing electrical and/or electronic components and more particularly to servicing electrical and/or electronic components in a computing system environment.
2. Description of Background
Electrical and electronic devices include many components that need servicing and replacement from time to time. One of the difficulties with providing such service is the process of determining which component(s) need replacement. To make matters worse, many such failures can cause a device or even an entire system environment shut down which in turn will make failure determination more difficult. This problem becomes even more complicated in environments that utilize many such devices and components where chance of failure is intensified.
One such situation where many devices and components are utilized in close proximity is a computing system environment. The larger the computing system environment, the more the chance of failure and/or need for servicing of the incorporated devices and components. Unfortunately, many times even a small failure can result in costly system performance problems and mulfunctions. The designers of such environments, have tried to incorporate redundancies and/or indicators that can aid in the determination of problems in such environments. Unfortunately, in most cases, however, even when an indicator is provided to pinpoint such problems during system operations, once main power is lost, the indicators provided by the system environment are no longer functional to signal the problems areas.
Losing service indicators in a power shut down is a serious problems in large computing system environments. This is because, in a large computing system environment, in order to service electrical hardware assemblies that include many such devices and components, it is often required to manually power off the specific hardware assembly in need of service, if not the entire system even when power shut down is not caused by the failure itself. In the situations discussed above, this usually results in the inability to identify the assembly, a particular component, or a specific location where the servicing needs to be performed. Determining the failed component quickly becomes difficult once the power is shut off which can lead to the significant problem of providing improperly performed service on the wrong assemblies, components, and locations.
One possible solution is to provide stored energy to power the logic hardware required to drive the indicators after the hardware assembly has been powered off. However, this approach usually limits the power off time in which the service procedure needs to be performed, since this service logic is constantly draining energy from the stored power source.
Consequently, a need exists for an apparatus and method for servicing electrical and electronic devices, such as those incorporated in a large computing environment, that can signal servicing needs even after a system shut down.